


the art of war

by renegadees



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Just angst, Literally it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 18:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16180424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renegadees/pseuds/renegadees
Summary: They come back to England with one missing from their ranks.





	the art of war

**Author's Note:**

> I have been staring and nitpicking at this piece for days, so someone for the love of god get this thing away from me.

They come back to England with one missing from their ranks.

Queenie Goldstein - according to official reports - had been abducted by Gellert Grindelwald in Paris and was now being held as a political prisoner in Bulgaria. Or Germany. Or somewhere in the Bavarian Forest. No one quite knew for sure  _where_ only that she wasn't  _here_.

The only witness was her sister, who was unconscious on site and catatonic in her brief moment of lucidity when she'd reached St. Mungo's.

The only lead they had wasn't even fit for visitors let-a-lone an interrogation.

-

He'd found her unconscious between two collapsed concrete pillars with a halo of blood circling her head and neck. It'd felt like the floor had been ripped from beneath him as he'd fallen to his knees to check for a pulse, and only when he felt the faint fluttering in her neck did he start to breathe again.

What followed was still a blur to him, somewhere between finding her and sitting vigil by her hospital bed were vague flashes of colours and blurs and faceless people he assumed were trying to speak to him.

For days he'd felt like he'd been wading through a thick fog; not shaving, barely eating, just sitting. When she'd finally opened her eyes at two thirty in the morning on day three did his world come back into focus.

He'd leaned in close and gently rested a hand above her head on the pillow. When she'd started crying he had to tamp down the urge to curl up and join her.

"Tina?"

"She went with him," she'd sobbed.

"Queenie? Don't worry we know he took her, there are people out looking for her now... What? What's wrong?"

" _No_ Newt! She went with him,  _willingly!_ "

"She could've been under the Imperius..." He'd trailed off when she'd started furiously shaking her head against the pillow.

"She wasn't! He held out his hand and she just walked up to him and took it," She'd began to turn hysterical as her voice got louder, "I  _failed_ Newt. I couldn't keep her safe, I couldn't protect her!"

She'd started sobbing harder as she'd curled body further toward him and hid her face into the pillow.

His eyes had watered and his back teeth hurt where he'd been grinding them in helpless frustration. He'd been stroking her hair back away from her face to try and soothe her but she hadn't seemed to notice.

Thinking quickly he'd tilted her head up so she'd look at him, "What you just told me, it doesn't leave this room."

"What?"

"You don't know what you saw -" he'd cut her off with a sharp look when she'd made to argue, " _No_ , you don't know what he has over her or why she chose to go with him. Until we figure that out we continue acting like she was kidnapped."

"Jacob -"

"We'll worry about him when he wakes up," at her look of alarm he'd hastily continued, "He took three direct stunners to the chest, it's easier for all involved to keep him unconscious until he fully recovered. They said he'll be fine in a few days."

She'd looked at him incredulously for a beat before straightening out and turning towards the other side of the room, "You have more faith in my sister than I do, Mr. Scamander."

"Tina?"

"You didn't see her. You didn't see any of it." She'd whispered. Before he could even think to form a reply a healer had waltzed in and kicked him out so she could look Tina over.

By the time he was allowed to return she'd been administered at least three different types of potions and was out cold again.

-

Walking through the Atrium and towards his office felt surreal after everything that had happened.

After their first conversation in the hospital, Tina seemed to be avoiding him, always sleeping when he stopped by.

The healers informed him she was recovering well, but when he'd gone to see her the day before they'd told him she'd been discharged that morning and that Miss. Lestrange had been the one to escort her out of the building.

He won't admit that that had nettled him just a little.

His brother catches up with him just as he's about to step on the elevator, his hand quickly catching the grate before it could close all the way and sending a boyish smile to the miffed looking woman who huffed as he stepped in.

"Sorry about that," it seems to placate her because she goes back to ignoring their existence. When the elevator starts to move he leans in close to Newt and asks, "Have you seen Goldstein?"

"Not since the day before yesterday, why?"

Theseus sighs, "She was here this morning but ever since word got out that she was going to be interrogated about her sister, no one's seen hide nor hair of her."

Shocking.

"I haven't spoken to her in weeks."

"Didn't you visit her in St. Mungo's?"

"Yes, but she was always asleep when I stopped by. We haven't had an actual conversation since she first woke up."

It seems that every Auror gets a look on their face that says they're about to interrogate you without  _actually_ interrogating you. It just so happens that Newt is intimately familiar with all of his brother's tricks of the trade and instead of paralyzing him with fear like it did when he was thirteen it just tenses up in irritation.

"What'd she say?" It's much to casual a question and more than a little insulting if Theseus doesn't think he can't pick up on it.

"She wanted to know if it was just the concussion and subsequent coma that made her think her sister was missing or if it were actually true."

"Did she mention anything else?"

"You mean aside from her sister being kidnapped?"

"Yes, Newton, aside from that."

He looks up to the roof of the elevator as if beseeching some higher power to give him the strength to deal with his brother, "No Theseus. I think the fact that her little sister was just abducted by a fairly dangerous criminal was traumatic enough on its own, nevermind if she saw anything else. And considering I found her on the ground in a pool of blood makes me doubt she would've been conscious enough to comprehend anything else."

Theseus bites the inside of his cheek but before he can retort the elevator stops, the voice overhead announcing they'd arrived at the  _Department and Control of Magical Beasts and Beings._

"If you see her, tell her she's needed upstairs." His brother is very good at making it sound like a threat.

"Yes Theseus, I'll do just that." He replies vaguely. If he sees Tina anytime soon, the last thing on his mind will be to tell her that a quarter of the Auror Department was hunting her down.

Unless it was to warn her.

-

Surprisingly she seeks him out first.

When he steps off the elevator and walks around the corner he almost jumps through the roof when he finds her sitting next to his office door, her knees against her chest and her face digging into her knees.

She must hear his approach because in the blink of an eye she goes from sitting to standing.

"I heard this corridor didn't get a lot of foot traffic." She's not looking at him, she's fiddling with her locket and staring resolutely at the ground. It gives him a good opportunity to look at her properly, she doesn't look as small as she did when she was in the hospital but there's no colour in her cheeks and there are bruises under her eyes. For someone who'd slept so much, she doesn't look at all rested.

"You're here for privacy then."

"No," she mumbles, "I'm here to see you."

"Why?"

Looking about as lost as he feels she shrugs and says, "I don't know what to do."

He turns to look over his shoulder, expecting Theseus to pop up any moment now. He looks at her again and bites his lip before blowing out a long breath and saying, " _Okay,_ okay. Let's just... office, my office. People are looking for you, and standing out here is going to get us caught sooner rather than later."

-

There's a chair in the corner that she spots and immediately goes to, sitting down and curling up into it, making herself look as small as possible.

"Theseus cornered me in the elevator just now, looking for _you_."

"Leta told me what was going on and I panicked. I've been down here for three hours now." She tells him, resting her chin on her knees.

"The nurses told me Leta checked you out of the hospital yesterday."

She nods and smiles thinly, "I told her that if she didn't come to officially file the paperwork to let me go I was going to stage a breakout."

"Why didn't you wait for me?"

The smile vanishes, "I was terrified you'd want to talk about it. What you said in St. Mungo's, about keeping it quiet and letting them all think she was abducted, I don't know if I can go through with that. I don't know if I can lie when they ask me what happened, Newt."

"Tina..."

"She's my  _little sister_. She's all I've ever had and I'll always want to protect her. But I'm just so  _angry_ and  _confused_ , Newt. I want her to be held accountable. She betrayed us. She committed treason. She  _needs_ to be held accountable for her actions and what they've done, what she's done specifically. Morrigan,  _who knows_ how long she's been playing us. She could've been working with Abernathy this entire time."

He shakes his head, "You don't know that."

"Neither do you!"

"It's  _Queenie_."

She scoffs, "You've barely known her a year, Newt. I've known her my entire life. I keep looking back on when things started changing, trying to pinpoint when her allegiances switched and  _I can't_ _!_ Do you know how horrifying that is? Thinking you raised someone to be good a whole only for them to do something like this?"

He drags one of the chairs in front of his desk over to where she's curled up and sits in front of her, "You still don't know what Grindelwald has over her. You don't know what he's said to make her go with him willingly. If the man could get Dumbledore to follow him for as long as he did do you honestly think Queenie could've stood a chance?"

She straightens at that and looks directly at him in the first time in forever, "I don't trust him."

"Grindelwald?"

"Dumbledore."

" _What?_ "

"There's something not right about him." She says.

There's an edge to his voice when he replies, "I owe that man a great deal."

"You're not the only one! Everyone owes him something. He intervenes on other people's behalves without being asked to and makes them think it's out of the goodness of his heart that he does so, he makes them think that they owe him. He collects people by collecting favours. By the time he's through, he'll have an entire army willing to die for him because they'll all be so thankful that he saved them at the right time."

He can't even begin to process that right now so he leaves it sitting there at the back of his mind to come back to at a later date.

"We aren't talking about Dumbledore, we're talking about Queenie." He says eventually.

"You brought him up first." She mutters.

"Tina until we know  _everything_ , don't you think it's safer for not only her but  _you_ as well if we just let them keep believing she's a hostage and not a participant?"

"I don't... I don't  _know_ , Newt."

He leans his elbows on his knees to get closer to her and says, "Think of how everyone is going to start looking at you if they find out what she did. Just look at the way they treat Leta because of her last name. I'm not saying your anger isn't misplaced or not justified, it  _is_. I'm just saying it's going to make things easier if people think she's innocent rather than guilty."

She blows out a frustrated breath and leans forward to bury her heads in her hands, "This is such a mess."

He inches forward more and places his hands on either side of her head, leaning in closer. "I know."

"I hate her so much right now."

"I know." He whispers.

She digs her face into his shoulder, "I miss her so much. I want her here.  _I want her back_."

He doesn't know what to say, so he opts to say nothing.

-

No one tells him how the meeting goes.

Need to know and all that.

He knows it lasts three hours. He knows that Tina hadn't told them about how Queenie might be a fugitive and not a hostage. He knows that whatever they've talked about has riled her because she comes straight back down to him after it's over and just clings to him.

He can't give her false words of hope and he knows she'd hate him if he tries.

So he just holds her to him as tightly as possible until she's ready to let go and walk with him into the fray.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr!
> 
> @ renegade-es


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